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60 °F Forecast | Road Cams Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Health Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley SHOP OUR VALLEY AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Classified Place an ad TOP JOBS EXTRA Ashland News NIE Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Moving here? eSouthernOregon CUSTOMER SERVICE FAQ's Advertise with us Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 9, 2004 Coho angling resumes for south coast Fisheries council has expanded the season for hatchery coho salmon to the California border By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Sport-anglers will be able to fish for coho salmon this summer off the Southern Oregon coast for the first time in 11 years under an expanded season for hatchery coho adopted Thursday by federal fish managers. The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted Thursday to extend Oregon’s annual season for fin-clipped coho south to the California border instead of stopping the open waters at Humbug Mountain near Port Orford. The Oregon hatchery coho season will open June 19 and run unimpeded until a 75,000-fish quota is reached, or Aug. 31, whichever comes first. The season is separate from a chinook salmon season for Southern Oregon and Northern California. That season opens May 15 and runs through Sept. 12 without a quota. The daily limit during the coho season will be two salmon a day, of which two may be fin-clipped coho. Advertisement Anglers fishing out of ports like Brookings and Gold Beach have been banned from all coho fishing in the ocean since 1993, when wild coho in Southern Oregon and Northern California streams were listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Fish managers maintain that anglers can target hatchery coho, and release any wild coho they catch, without eclipsing ESA thresholds for protecting wild coho. Thursday’s vote drew applause from sport-anglers who have had to release all their coho — even hatchery-bred fish — during chinook-only recreational fishing seasons. "So many people catch these cohos during the chinook season, so this is going to make a big difference," said Jim Welter, a Brookings sport-fishing advocate who lobbied the PFMC for the change. Thursday’s decision, however, irked wild coho advocates like Rich Nawa from the Siskiyou Regional Education Project based in Cave Junction. Though wild coho caught in the ocean must be released unharmed, many will die needlessly from increased hooking mortality caused by anglers targeting coho and chinook instead of just chinook, Nawa said. Nawa said increased returns of wild coho in recent years are due to good ocean-rearing conditions, not improvements in freshwater habitat — a driving force in wild coho recovery efforts. "I don’t think that’s any reason to go killing wild coho in the ocean," Nawa said. "Obviously, economics is driving this thing." Craig Foster from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said computer modeling shows that extending the fishery to the California border would result in no added loss of threatened wild coho, in part because it theoretically does not increase the number of wild coho caught and released as so-called "non-target" species. The harvest off Southern Oregon is expected to be around 3,000 fin-clipped coho, with the lion’s share of the quota still likely caught by north coast anglers. The PFMC did not propose extending the hatchery coho season into California over concerns for protecting threatened coho runs in California. The PFMC’s vote must be approved by the federal Department of Commerce before it becomes official, but that is largely considered a formality. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback Student Loan Consolidation Conference Calls - $50/Month Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker, Trunk, Footlockers home equity loans helzberg Slippers Student Loans afsa teleconferencing Memory Foam Mattress Advertisement s